Better Late Than Never
As a teenager and self-proclaimed militant feminist, it was simple to fight the patriarchy; I just had to pick fights with my father.
Why, yes, it is a Guardian article. Specifically, A Feminist’s Guide to Raising Boys by Bibi van der Zee.
In the 1970s, from my child’s-eye point of view, it seemed pretty much agreed that boys and girls were essentially the same; it was just society that turned us into “boys” and “girls.” Simone de Beauvoir had said: “One is not born a woman but, rather, becomes a woman,” and the whole planet had nodded in agreement, and that was that.
Readers of a certain age may find that their memories of the 70s, and of boys and girls being supposedly interchangeable, and of the whole planet nodding at this conceit, are somewhat different.
In the early years of my career in journalism, being a woman was no brake on being able to work as late, be paid as little and drink as much as any of the male reporters I knew. Then I had sons. It may sound naïve, but I hadn’t really thought about how that would work. I had a vague plan that… my life would more or less carry on as before.
It does sound a tad unrealistic.
This was not what I had expected… Because I was the one with the womb and the mammary glands, I would be the one carrying the children and then feeding them.
At which point, readers may wish to remind themselves that Ms van der Zee writes political commentary, and guides to activism and protesting, in order to share her insights with the world.
It was a startling window into other times and worlds, where, if you had no birth control and your body belonged to your husband by law, then you could just be impregnated over and over again, side-lined and kept at home.
Ah, yes. The modern marriage.
Suddenly my feminism was visceral.
An intensification brought about by the realisation that babies and small children generate quite a lot of laundry and disorder, and require feeding, bathing and near-continual attention. And by the fact that, if your husband is the main breadwinner, his work will tend to take priority over your own attempts at freelance journalism. In short, that, as a parent, a mother, one’s life will not in fact carry on as before.
And so, complications ensue:
Looking back, there were a lot of things I should have talked more about to the boys. Many of my friends turn out to have strategised. One friend said: “Make it normal to bring up topics around the table – talk about Brett Kavanaugh, the middle-class white male dominance of government, pornography, social media, talk about strong women and men.” Someone else admitted to “constant nagging on my part about how to treat women, with the occasional lecture on systemic patriarchy.”
Lectures on systemic patriarchy. Also, eat your vegetables.
At one meal, when I tried to explain to a table of men and boys why #MeToo was a necessary act of mass civil disobedience, how the ideal of a rule of law actually shielded white men and protected the status quo… The meaning of rule of law was explained to me… it all fell apart… I lost it and walked away in tears.
Empowerment, baby.
When the boys were small… their boy-ness made me doubt what I’d always believed – that it’s nurture, not nature, that underneath, all humans are basically the same. But it was impossible not to notice how differently they behaved to some of the girls we knew.
It occurs to me that feminism could be seen as a kind of doctrinaire retardation – one that often seems to necessitate a lot of subsequent correction and belated catching-up.
None of them ever wanted to go clothes shopping with me. And they absolutely weren’t up for a romcom on a rainy Sunday afternoon either.
For instance.
It also occurs to me that to be shocked by differences in how boys and girls often behave, as Ms van der Zee admitted in an earlier Guardian article – such that “even the suggestion” of innate gender differences, now clearly visible, “felt like sedition,” indeed “revolutionary” – again suggests a practised, almost farcical, denial of reality. One that in turn prompts a suspicion that perhaps one shouldn’t be quite so credulous regarding feminist claims of How Things Really Are.
Happily, and despite heated mealtime lectures on the evils of white men, Ms van der Zee’s children seem surprisingly well-adjusted:
My eldest son, Sam, now 17, likes to talk about films or tell me amazing facts about the stars and the universe. My middle boy is a great cook; we’ve spent hours covered in flour together. My youngest, Joe, is obsessed with music, and some of the happiest times of my life have been spent playing YouTube jukebox with him. They like some of the things I like and not others. It’s almost as if they’re… individuals?
And,
They may yet turn out to be oppressive, patriarchal monsters, but the signs are pretty well submerged for now.
For now.
Damn straight.
[ Drags away mop and bucket full of italics. ]
Hi Jabrwok,
They scramble away, pawing their noses, howling, and yelping. I reserve it for dogs who clearly mean business and are large enough to maim or kill me. (We have several pedestrians a year here killed by dogs.). Only had to do it twice and in both cases would have preferred to squirt the asshole owner instead.
The dog-attack situation is so bad here that the state legislature has actually bestirred itself, something that normally happens only when the rich need another tax break. Right now, letting your dog kill somebody can be punished with, at most, six months in jail. Efforts are underway to at least make it a minor felony.
Hi CJ Nerd,
NO woman EVER forgets about the baby (assuming her brain is functioning normally, she’s not sick or tripping or falling down drunk). He is ALWAYS in the back of your mind. That’s why when things suddenly get quiet, you rush to see what he got into.
I’m of the firm belief that most of those hot-car deaths are first-degree murder. I suspect what happens is middle-class or UMC Mom finds the baby cuts too much into her Personal Development and solves the problem in the easiest way. There was a case a few years ago—in Atlanta, I believe—where a school principal “forgot” her baby was in her hot SUV. 3 or 4 times. She finally managed to kill him on the last go-round. She was charged with child endangerment but walked. Not once during that summer’s worth of murder attempts did Children’s Services take the baby from her. I’m sure Shaniqua in the hood and Destiny in the trailer park would have been treated with the same deference.
To Pogonip:
My wife and I had our first baby last year, but we’re a fairly mature couple. In our prenatal class, the “official stance” was taught us that we should do the “put something important in the back seat” so as not to forget our baby. It seems impossible that a parent can forget a baby, but I think it does happen. Leaving aside postpartum depression/psychosis, an exhausted brain does not process things normally. It seems unconscionable that someone could forget a baby, but if it didn’t happen, they wouldn’t need to teach it. Now, I’m not trying to say that “forgetting” doesn’t happen, but I don’t think we should write off all cases as not legitimate.
As far as for my wife, the suggestion of leaving her phone in the back seat as a reminder is laughable. She forgets where it is as soon as she puts it down. 😀
Pogo,
On a Windows machine START>RUN>CHARMAP will bring up the character map with all the special characters æ ß â ™ £ § ç ÿØú want товарищ ♫. It also shows keyboard shortcuts for the most common.
Macs probably have the same thing that involves turning an arrow to the character and pulling a string.
“put something important in the back seat” so as not to forget our baby…
Of course if the nanny state didn’t demand that sprogs be locked and belted in the back in padded motion restraining seats that rival those in a Formula 1 car and let them ride up front, this would be less of a issue, but the nanny staters never thing of the law of unintended consequences, a law that will not be mocked.
I’m of the firm belief that most of those hot-car deaths are first-degree murder.
I don’t know that I’d go as far as ‘most’ but I definitely think there’s a horrible truth there. I seem to recall a case in the southern U.S. where two outstanding citizens did just that. There was enough off about it to cause the police to dig into it. They found these Mensa members had googled how long it took to die in a hot car prior to the event. I forgot the outcome but I don’t think it involved doing the same to them so I’m not entirely sure justice was done.
I have two children in their teens, so well out of the car seat years, and I’ve lost and forgotten many things in the course of my life, but I never (touching wood) forgot they were with me when I was out of the house. Even to this day I keep them in the corner of my eye when we’re out together.
The read is long but worth it, full of good old fashioned frontier SJW gibberish.
I agree with Farnsworth Johnson!
We should be encouraging this lobster bucket fight in academia, specifically the Classics. Encourage and make very well known that we see it as a wonderful opportunity to test these progressive stack solutions. Anyone can buy Homer and Shakespeare so the stakes for civilization are low, but the lessons drawn from the inevitable collapse of the Classics are useful.
Much like Venezuela is proving to be a useful experiment because if there’s to be widespread suffering it should at least serve a purpose. We’ve not had a full-retard socialist country collapse in the internet age where prior support for evil regimes cannot be so easily memory-holed.
One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these people.
Inside The Online Community Facilitating The Gender Transitions Of 5-Year-Olds
It’s the Transexual Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
We’ve not had a full-retard socialist country collapse in the internet age where prior support for evil regimes cannot be so easily memory-holed.
Yet the sidewindin’, bushwackin’, hornswagglin’, cracker croakers like She Guevara are still pushing nonsense like #notrealsocialism #USimperialistintervention and denying what is really happening.
Some men you just can’t reach.
Some men you just can’t reach.
True of course. But if a black man dresses in a Klan robe and claims his dark hands are merely dirty most everyone sees through the charade. In the same vein, Venezuelan’s blood won’t wash off Corbyn, Sanders, et al’s hands so easily.
(ok that was a real stretch but it’s getting tougher to keep with the Blazin references)
In the same vein, Venezuelan’s blood won’t wash off Corbyn, Sanders, et al’s hands so easily.
I would like to believe that is true, but given the tongue bath the leftist politician/media/academic complex gives to any non-German dictator, I’m not betting the riverboat on it.
We’ve not had a full-retard socialist country collapse in the internet age where prior support for evil regimes cannot be so easily memory-holed.
I doubt that socialist conviction can be corrected with mere evidence, however vivid and catastrophic. The urges to which it appeals – covetousness, resentment, unrealism and irresponsibility, for instance – are eternal, inexhaustible.
And once introduced, promises of freebies are unlikely to go out of fashion.
Over on this side of the pond recently Official Advice™ was given to parents that to prevent leaving a sprog in a car, they should “leave something important in the backseat”.
Actually it is leave something you’ll think about immediately when exiting the car rather than “important”. A lot of important things can be forgotten in the back seat. The most recommended object to toss into the backseat is one’s left shoe.
What with modern car seats for infants that resemble space capsules, rear facing, tucked in the backseat then baby asleep, a distracted parent possibly on a different schedule than normal might actually forget the child.
We all think *we* would never do it, but it does tragically happen.
Don’t get me wrong, apologists gonna apologize, and perhaps I’m viewing events overly optimistically, but I wonder:
-Is Owen Jones and co a laughingstock to a greater portion of the general public than Walter Duranty was in his time? Genuinely no idea.
-Is having tons of video evidence of collectivist failure better than not insofar as countering normie narratives?
-Taken as given that irresponsible covetousness is unbounded, wouldn’t you prefer to fight such a force with their own words rather than via the 4th estate whose sympathies lie with the authoritarians?
I don’t expect to change the minds of the true believers, but rather more easily force them to expound on their true intentions.
Actually it is leave something you’ll think about immediately when exiting the car rather than “important”.
Also reported by ABC news, “Leave a purse or important item you will need in the backseat…”, regardless of the exact wording, the simple solution is a two seat car, or a regular cab pickup – kid has to sit up front.
-Is having tons of video evidence of collectivist failure better than not insofar as countering normie narratives?
Yes, but only if it is accepted, the usual lot have already claimed the guys getting food from the garbage truck was faked and a Potemkin grocery touted as the real situation, and still think Cuba is a paradise for the average Jose, so, being the cynic I am, I doubt dropping Bernie or Chiquita Khrushchev into the middle of a food riot over in Caracas would change their minds.
I don’t think I ever forgot one of my babies (though my eldest, when he was three, wandered off in a crowded shopping centre while I was pushing the buggy with the youngest in it – that was the most terrifying ten minutes of my life), but I did forget that I’d tied up our cocker spaniel outside the supermarket, and went home with three children and no dog. I sympathise with the lady on the plane, actually.
Sam Johnson is right that Farnsworth Johnson is right about SJW gibberish.
I would like to believe that is true, but given the tongue bath the leftist politician/media/academic complex gives to any non-German dictator, I’m not betting the riverboat on it.
I think Erich Honecker got his share of tongue from the Anglosphere’s Bien Pensants…
Erich Honecker got his share of tongue
They should put that in their leaflets.
I think Erich Honecker got his share of tongue from the Anglosphere’s Bien Pensants…
Yer right – forgot about him, I stand corrected.
Well, if the majority feels you can forget your own baby even if your brain’s working right, I will concede—but I still think that woman in Atlanta ought to be on Death Row. The DA must have found the crime particularly flagrant even to bother to charge her, knowing she was a defense lawyer’s dream.
Now that I think of it, I wonder why she stopped with the baby? She was such a dream defendant a good lawyer could have probably made it possible for her to get away with offing the whole family and collecting a lot of insurance. Ka-ching!
Buried under a lot of silliness in The Guardian article lies a grudging admission by van der Zee that many beliefs held by modern feminists do not withstand the harsh light of reality.
Baby steps.
PST Johnson is right that Sam Johnson is right that Farnsworth Johnson is right. Got that, Johnson?
Inside The Online Community Facilitating The Gender Transitions Of 5-Year-Olds
I believe one way to start treating these parents as vicious homophobes – people so afraid they may have a gay child they are willing to “transition” their child into a simulacrum of heterosexuality.
Can some of you Brits explain why British citizens’s views on Brexit seem largely according to caste—the Woke hate it, the peasants like it? From what little I know about it it looks like all Brits will come out ahead.
OUR efficient legislature, meanwhile,is squabbling over office space. Now-retired Representative Paul Ryan (Jackass-Wisconsin), for some reason, offered Vice-President Mike Pence (R-Indiana) an office in the House of Representatives. The Veep normally does not want or need an office in the House since, when he votes, he does so with the Senate (he breaks ties), but, for whatever reason, Pence accepted—maybe the view or the cafeteria food was great, or the parking was better, who knows, who cares. Well, Speaker of the House (the House head poobah) Nancy Pelosi (Mummified-California) cares, and has forthwith evicted Pence after two years in which he sat there, apparently bothering no one. Now, considering all the fighting that will occur, we taxpayers will probably end up spending 50 kajillion dollars to move Pence out of the House. I guess Nancy needs something to keep her busy, since the U. S. had no serious problems for her to work on.
I believe one way to start treating these parents as vicious homophobes…
That and fetishizing their kids urination posture to the extent that they have them fitted with genital appliances makes them candidates for flat out child abuse charges.
I don’t know, in the case of the apocryphal necrophilia story that Pogonip related maybe the actual quote was “chacun a son gout” (every body has a unique taste) as opposed to “a chacun son gout” (to each their own taste). French translations are tricky that way.
Left without comment, found while perusing “The Encarta Book of Quotations.”
“Common morality now treats childbearing as an aberration. There are practically no good reasons left for exercising one’s fertility.”
Germaine Greer, from Sex and Destiny, 1984
French translations are tricky that way.
Good Point! If that’s the case my apologies to Pogonip.
“Common morality now treats childbearing as an aberration…
Proving once again that Brave New World and 1984 are blueprints for the modern world for lefties. No small coincidence she wrote that in 1984.
PST Johnson is right that Sam Johnson is right that Farnsworth Johnson is right. Got that, Johnson?
Behind the bar stands David Thompson, he keeps the glasses nice and clean.
Chacun a son pee.
he keeps the glasses nice and clean.
That two-star hygiene certificate didn’t come cheap.
Yer right – forgot about him, I stand corrected
Not that there was anything incorrect about the actual point you were making by synecdoche… 🙂
Hi Feet,
I didn’t exactly exercise my fertility, it sort of exercised me. Son was a happy accident. I remember wondering what the heck I was going to do with a baby, but after I had THIS END UP tattooed on the back of his little head, it was pretty easy.
PST Johnson is right that Sam Johnson is right that Farnsworth Johnson is right. Got that, Johnson?
Yes, the Johnsons are in agreement.
That’s odd. Last month you said they were merkins.
LOL. This sounds like a fun bar. You really should hang a sign out front.
This is a classy joint, although David & the henchlesbians are getting overworked.
The woman who wrote this article is a total moron. This article must be a work of fiction because no sentient human could be this stupid and ignorant.
Are we to believe that it took her having children to understand that their are fundamental differences between males and females that are biologically / genetically / biochemistry based?
Are we to understand that the writer did not know this??
This article is either a total work of fiction or the writer is literally mentally ill, delusional or just plain stupid.
…writer is literally mentally ill, delusional or just plain stupid.
Embrace the power of “and”.
…no sentient human could be this stupid and ignorant.
I take it you haven’t been following the antics of some of our newly elected US congressthings, especially Miss Chiquita Khrushchev.
Jeebers! Film? Music? Cooking? Did they never play war, shoot guns, play pick-up baseball or football? I think she got them right where she always wanted them. Nurture won
This article must be a work of fiction because no sentient human could be this stupid and ignorant.
Remember the axioms:
What happens if the land was fought over by several indigenous peoples? Play by play of massacres?